Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Indians, ever a chatty lot, are obsessed with the idea of being obsessed with social media. That is why, as the BJP’s stunning victory in the Indian general elections was declared, the news media immediately began to examine the impact of social media campaigning in the elections. Numbers aside, the victory over social media has revealed the fault lines of Indian society as it stands today.

India’s online population is small as compared to its offline population – about 213 million users to 1.2 billion people – but it is growing. Though these figures expand and contract depending on whom you ask, we do know that 33 million are on Twitter and Facebook has hit the 100 million-user mark. Given these statistics, it is indeed impressive that India’s newest Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has 4.2 million followers on Twitter already. The would-be leader of opposition, Rahul Gandhi, whose party did not win enough seats to actually assume the seat as leader of the opposition in parliament, isn’t on Twitter. However, his party has an account, with about 181,000 followers. There are other political stars on social media, including individual members of various parties, and notably, members of the newly formed Aam Aadmi Party.

However, when asked the question: “who won the social media war” – because, to be sure, there was one – the answer can only really be Narendra Modi. In fact, his own campaign machinery was so well oiled that his personal profile overshadowed his party. “Ab ki baar, Modi Sarkar” (this time, a Modi government) was arguably the catchiest slogan on the campaign and it inspired many a joke, including a takeover of the nursery rhyme – “twinkle, twinkle, little star, ab ki baar, Modi sarkar!” And according to reports, the BJP was mentioned on Twitter, on average, about 30,000 times a day, with the Congress trailing behind at between 15,000-20,000. Modi’s victory tweet promising a better India after election results were declared was retweeted 69,872 times.

Truthfully, there is no way that social media could have supplanted the traditional route. Modi’s tireless campaigning – 437 rallies, 5,827 public interface events across 25 states that is a distance of 300,000km – is impressive. But, equally impressive was the BJP’s entire digital campaign effort; a “social media war room” that reportedly cost Rs 35 lakh (35,000 GBP), with 30 computers and about 50 volunteers, tracking activities across India’s 92,000 villages. Andaccounts from insiders, young professionals, many whom took sabbaticals from their jobs to participate in this campaign, talks of a breathless environment, where Facebook was used to crowdsource ideas for speeches, and ‘Mission 272’ (in terms of how many seats they were aiming to win) became a reality. In fact, many creative contributions from BJP’s supporters – videos, jingles, songs and poems – can be found on thewebsite.

At the same time, social media has been very revealing about the state of the Indian majority. The tonality of political discourse over the internet, which was very polarized between the Hindu rightwingers and secularists saw vicious language, trolling and hate speech dotting the landscape. However, the Hindu right, abused as communal in the time of the Congress government have emerged victorious and unapologetic about their political leanings. In public groups on Google Plus, cyber Hindus declare that a “pro Hindu lobby is not an option, but a sheer necessity.” In fact, the ‘liberal’ discourse that sweeps much of the mainstream English media was taken aback at the sweeping victory that the BJP has earned in this election. There is nervousness that the BJP, supported and guided by the RSS – Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—a right-wing, nationalist group espousing strict discipline, martial training and self sacrifice in defence of the Motherland, often derided for being extremist – will work towards a majoritarian agenda where minorities will find less space to exist. These fears are compounded by the RSS’s beliefs –formalized in annual reports– that seek to impose a strict moral code that frowns upon live-in relations, homosexuality and also keeping an eye on minority communities. The RSS has being heartened by educated Indians joining their cause via social media, thereby signaling that their views might no longer be frowned upon as extreme or communal. They do not want to apologize for representing the view of the Hindu right.

And on cue, Narendra Modi, in a rousing speech formally accepting his role as the leader of the majority party in Parliament, promised his fellow BJP MPs that by the birth anniversary of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya in 2016, co-founder of the Bharitiya Jan Sangh that later became the BJP as known today, India shall rise to its promise of being a great nation. Tying down his campaign promises to his deep association with the RSS, the signal is clear. Indeed, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former Prime Minister, had affirmed proudly that “the Sangh is my soul”. The Hindu is back in Hindustan (another name for India).

An analysis in India Today magazine has declared the Indian cybersphere ‘saffron’ (the color associated with the Hindu right)writing, “But their agenda is a mix of post-modern and traditional. They oppose dynasty politics, particularly the Nehru-Gandhi clan and its allies such as Shiv Sena. They call minority appeasement ‘pseudo-secularism’ with such fervour that their sentiment could easily be interpreted as Hindu supremacist or anti-Muslim. They are against lower-caste reservation, particularly because it is poorly implemented. They are concerned about internal security. But above all, they are against corruption.” In deconstructing the ways of the Hindu saffron social media user, the article offers certain clues, such as the words “proud”, “patriot” and “Hindu” appearing in their bios, and often uploading images of Hindu gods as their display picture.

The people have spoken. The media is filled with analysis that people have either embraced Modi for his Hindu leanings, or ignored them in order realize the dream of “development” that is has promised to deliver. The number of Muslim MPs in parliament is down to 21 from 30 in the last session, the lowest number since India’s first elections. The Congress and its allies, who built careers on carefully constructed platforms of secularism – in their first term, they had a Muslim President, Sikh Prime Minister and Christian leader of the party – have been set aside in favour of a openly religious and Hindu BJP. Whatever be the reasons for the vote, for the everyday people tweeting and Facebooking, it appears that being pro-Hindu is slowly being disassociated with being communal. For many, this is a relief.

Monday, May 12, 2014

A friend recently blogged about the Indian elections and wrote in his
post about a tweet from the Aam Admi Party’s Somnath Bharti, in
frustration as he wasn’t able to upload a video of his party workers
being beaten up in Amethi, that he would have done so if the broadband
would have been better. It struck my friend as funny, at the time, but
it struck me as very telling. Amethi could be considered one of India’s
VIP constituencies, a stronghold of the Gandhi family. Even an offhand
comment about the inadequacy of the quality of broadband exposes how far
away India really is from not just proving the internet to its people,
but providing quality access. It also made me wonder how governments of
the day blame YouTube for their communal law and order problems, given
that YouTube is painfully slow to load in New Delhi itself most of the
time – but I digress.

If TV adverts were anything to go by, India is nodding along to “what
an Idea sirjee” and a plethora of celebrities are using 3G to post
silly videos of each other. Urban youth have no concerns outside
Facebook and Twitter, and everyone seems to have only content to create,
with the speed of broadband a given.

And then there is the mainstream media which reports on what
“Twitter” is saying about any given subject, and either feeds off gossip
and opinions on the social media platform or then tries to lead the
discussion over there by asking its patrons to tweet using hashtags.
Just to put it in context, India’s Twitter base is roughly 33 million, which is 2.75% of India’s entire population.

And, as far as the two national parties go, the BJP manifesto
speaks of an innovative and technology driven society that is globally
competitive. It mentions e-government at some length. The Congress manifesto
too, talks of connecting every village in India with broadband in three
years to open ‘vast new opportunities’, but no specific employment
opportunities in urban and sei-urban areas. Currently, Karnataka, which
boasts of India’s IT hub Bangalore, is under a Congress government. On
another note, the Aam Aadmi Party,
India’s first urban underdog political party talks about using
information technology to promote transparency and reduce corruption in
government. There is no other specific reference to the potential of the
internet in India.

In fact, outside official lines in party mandates (and the most in
the BJP’s), this election season has slowly seen the campaigns devolve
from talk of development to the usual caste and communal equations.
Therefore, it might be pertinent for them to be reminded about what is
at stake right for the country in the coming years.

The numbers speak for themselves, released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
As of February 2014, the number of broadband subscribers in India was
14.80 million, about 1.71% up from the previous month. Growing even more
rapidly are the number of users access the internet through their
mobiles or dongles, which stood at 42.81 million in February 2014, a
growth of 2.05% from January 2014. The top five wired broadband
providers in India are BSNL (9.98 million), Bharti (1.39 million), MTNL
(1.10 million), YOU Broadband (0.37 million) and Beam Telecom (0.37
million). As for the top wireless broadband service providers, there is
Bharti (10.60 million), Reliance (6.98 million), Idea (6.50 million),
BSNL (6.38 million) and Vodafone (6.14 million).

Studies analyze the potential of the internet not just in social
terms, but economic. A McKinsey report published in December 2013 called
“Online and Upcoming: The Internet’s Impact on India” reveals that the
Internet contributes 1.6% of India’s GDP, roughly $30 billion. The
report says this could grow to 2.8 to 3.3% by 2015 if India achieves its
potential for growth with respect to the number of Internet users and
Internet technology-related consumption and investment. However,
according to a joint report by KPMG and ASSOCHAM,
India is currently losing about 70% of its new business in the Business
Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry to competitors like Philippines and
Eastern Europe. This is in part because of rising costs in bigger
metros, and the lack of English speaking employees. The solution lies
not just in vocational training schemes but also in moving these offices
to tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Not taking swift action could cost
approximately $30 billion in foreign exchange earnings.

In country that ranks 123 in the world when it comes to average
broadband connection speed and 125 in average peak connection speed,
according to the ‘State of the Internet’
report by Akamai, this is a serious challenge. For example, in India, a
broadband leader like Airtel offers speeds from 1 Mbps up to a maximum
of 100 Mbps (on fiber based broadband network in urban Delhi) while in
Guna,(a small town in MP), the range of offered broadband speed is from
512 kbps to 2 Mbps. In rural areas, BSNL offers speeds of 512 kbps to 2
mbps. However, experts say that the difference between actual and
promised speed varies a lot from place to place. The actual speed could
range from 90% but go as low was 20% of what is advertised. This is
dependent on the network and the customer premise equipment. For all
this to improve, a sense of urgency needs to enter the Indian market. As
Rajan Anandan, Managing Director of Google India, said in a recent
interview, “nobody in the world except India defines 512 kbps as broadband.” Late in 2013, the government of India cleared aproposal
to provide three internet connections and one wi-fi hotspot in each of
the 2.5 lakh gram panchayats spread across the country. The project
should be completed by March 2016. The plan is to provide 100 Mbps
broadband speeds to all the gram panchayats in the country.

In terms of mobile broadband, ‘the next big thing’ according to
numbers, there is still a while to go. Telecom providers are
aggressively offering 3G services and the use of smartphone in India is
on the rise. However, following complaints about the quality of service,
the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has started a consultation process for setting minimum download speeds of 1Mbps for 3G connections and 56Kbps for 2G connections.

Ultimately, both the spread and speed of the internet in India will
have a direct impact on India’s economy. But that’s not all. Somnath
Bharti and million others will be able to upload videos and tweet – be
they of political relevance or not. India’s e-government schemes will
find faster delivery of services. Sectors like e-commerce will be able
to grow. And India’s IT and ITES sectors, which contribute up to 9% of
the country’s GDP, will also remain in the race to be a sure avenue for
employment and income generation.

The India media is the subject of the news yet again. This time
though, the private news channels — the usual suspects – are only
reporting the news. Instead, the latest war of words among politicians
has thrown the public service broadcaster, Doordarshan, into the
limelight.

Narendra Modi, prime ministerial candidate for the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) was interviewed by Doordarshan, and it appears that comments
he made about a friendship with a senior member of the ruling Indian
National Congress were edited out of the final interview. The news broke
on social media, and immediately the channel was accused of censoring
the statements that might make Congress seem too chummy with their sworn
opposition.

The CEO of Doordarshan, Jawhar Sircar, in a letter to the board of
Prasar Bharti, the autonomous body that runs the channel, made it very
clear that the public broadcaster does indeed suffer from government
interference. Reportedly, Sircar wrote in his letter
that there has been a lost opportunity to convince a “young minister to
break this long traditional linkage between the ministry and the News
Division, which has continued unabated long after Prasar Bharati was
born and assigned its distinct role in 1997”. This is a direct reference
to the current Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Manish Tewari.
In the same report, carried by the Economic Times, a member of the
Congress have rubbished this claim, saying that Sircar is “merely
currying favour with the new dispensation as he had never raised the
issue of autonomy earlier”.

Narendra Modi interview isn’t the first time Sircar has brought up
the question of autonomy for the broadcaster. Sircar’s personal website
carried news items relating to “freeing Prasar Bharti from government control”, papers that suggest DD could follow the BBC’s annual license fee model, as well as older news items about how the channel, under the Congress-led UPA government has previously neglected to give Narendra Modi the kind of airtime the private channels have accorded. For his part, Minister Tewari has made a statement
that “autonomy of Prasar Bharti is guaranteed by an act of Parliament.
I&B ministry has an arms length relationship with Prasar Bharti”.

One can be sure the complaints about airtime will be flipped around
if another party forms the government. Therefore, politics aside, the
basic question needs to be addressed: despite an autonomous status, does
the government in fact wield undue influence over Prasar Bharti (which
includes radio as well)?

The current structure of the public broadcaster stands as such: the
Prasar Bharti is an autonomous body that answers to the Parliament of
India through the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. All of its
staff are officers recruited through the Union Public Service
Commission, and are transferred to their positions at Prasar Bharti
after having served in other government departments. There is belief
that this might be the reason for the “government” mindset shown in the
two directorates under the body; All India Radio or Akashvani, and
Doordarshan, the television broadcaster. In fact, till 1997, both had
been directly under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, but
had been given this separation to be able to function in a “fair,
objective and creative manner”.

The government had appointed a committee under Sam Pitroda, a man
who is credited for helping Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi bring the
telecom revolution to India in the 1980s, to present a report on the
function of Prasar Bharti. The report batted for more autonomy for the
broadcaster, but went further and suggested that it also be open to use
private sources of funding and monetizing its assets. In an event to release the report,
Pitroda said that the broadcaster must “look at public interest and not
just government interest”. Along with input on technology, human
resource and content, the two volume report (which had the current CEO
as a member) also delves into government and organisation. The suggestions
include transferring complete ownership and management of assets to
Prasar Bharti to make the organisation administratively and financially
autonomous of the government, and setting up a regulatory body to ensure
public accountability of all content on their radio and television
networks, while acknowledging that the state does have a distinct
requirement to “broadcast messages and accomplishments of public
interest which can be met by using existing public and private
broadcaster infrastructure”.

The report was submitted to the government in February 2014, and is
“under consideration”. It will be up to the next government, to be
formed in mid-May, to take action, especially in light of the recent
controversy.

Not all are convinced of real change taking place on the ground. In editorial a few months before the report was released, the Pioneer suggested
that “the Government supports the idea of an autonomous public
broadcaster, in practice it has never been able to let go. Unless this
fundamental dichotomy is resolved —either the Government gives up
control or relinquishes the autonomy idea — the Government will continue
to have a complicated relationship with Prasar Bharati, no matter how
many expert committees it sets up. In the meantime, the tax-payer-funded
broadcaster will continue to drain the exchequer and be of even less
use to the public.” Others, such as media analyst Sevanti Ninan of The
Hoot even questioned the genuine interest the government has in
reforming the broadcaster by initiating the Pitroda expert committee,
asking: “I don’t know why they are undertaking this just before the
elections time because if there are radical recommendations there is no
time to implement them.” In an article on the subject
she addresses the crucial question of attracting talent, writing that
“to attract the best personnel the salary/ package should be linked with
the market compensation. The tenure of full time members should be for a
period of five years and for the Independent Directors for a period of
three years. So, no more pegging salaries at a level that only attracts
applications from former government personnel. The CEO of Prasar Bharati
so far, in its 16 years of existence, has always been a former IAS
officer.” There are also serious updates needed in technology
upgradation, content and presentation of the news.

For the moment, Doordarshan is thinking about probing into the
matter of the edited Narendra Modi interview. But the larger problem
cannot be solved on a case-to-case basis. Since 1996, Pitroda’s would be
the fourth panel the government has created to look into this issue of
Prasar Bharti. It would well be worth the effort for a new government to
give the public service broadcaster to the public.

Thursday, May 01, 2014

India was among the few governments that did not sign the NETmundial
outcome statement. But why does it seem that the world’s largest
democracy is not putting its weight behind a “bottom-up, open, and
participatory” multistakeholder process?
In his address to the NETmundial gathering, Vinay Kwatra, the official Indian representative said,
“We recognize the important role that various stakeholders play in the
cyber domain, and welcome involvement of all legitimate stakeholders in
the deliberative and decision making process. Internet is used for
transactions of core economic, civil and defence assets at national
level and in the process, countries are placing their core national
security interests in this medium. Now with such expansive coverage of
States’ activities through the internet, the role of the governments in
the Internet governance, of course in close collaboration and
consultation with other stakeholders is an imperative.”

The message was clear. The internet has a large role to play in
India’s national policy goals, and to that end, a global internet
governance ecosystem has to be managed, at the international level, by
multilateral mechanisms.

India has over 200 million Internet users — with about 52 million
subscriptions — over 900 million mobile telephone subscribers. These
numbers are only going to grow. Kwatra, continuing his address, added
that, “On our part, however, we would have liked to some of important
principles and ideas, highlighted by us and many other countries
reflected in the draft outcome document… (we) look forward to
constructively engaging with other delegations in collectively
contribute to making the Internet open, dynamic and secure, and its
governance balanced between rights and responsibilities of all its
stakeholders.”

Kwatra was speaking, of course, at NETmundial, dubbed the “world cup
of internet governance.” Held in Sao Paolo, Brazil, on April 23-24,
2014, the conference was announced by Brazil President Dilma Rousseff.
The entire chain of events can be traced back to the revelations by
Edward Snowden that the US’s National Security Agency had been spying on
its own citizens and other countries alike, including the personal
communication of President Rousseff. In a heated statement at the UN General Assembly in September 2013,
she called for the UN to oversee a new global legal system to govern
the internet. She said such multilateral mechanisms should guarantee the
“freedom of expression, privacy of the individual and respect for human
rights” and the “neutrality of the network, guided only by technical
and ethical criteria, rendering it inadmissible to restrict it for
political, commercial, religious or any other purposes.

Soon, after a brief consultation with Fadi Chehade in October 2013,
the head of ICANN — Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers –
an organization thatcoordinates the Internet’s global domain name
system, the the dates of NETmundial was announced. And to add
expectation to the event, in March 2014, the the U.S. Commerce
Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration
(NTIA) announced its intent
to transition key internet domain name functions to the global
multistakeholder community. It clarified that it would not hand over
ICANN to any government-led body. Suddenly, NETmundial gained weight as
it was to be the next international forum where the future of internet
governance was to be debated – and now one of the organizations
government a part of the internet was in play. A far cry from what
President Rousseff had suggested in the UN General Assembly, instead of
talking about an international legal regime to govern cyberspace, the
focus of the meeting turned to multistakeholderism as the way forward in
the sphere of internet governance.

The draft outcome statement and the subsequent final outcome state
released after the two-day conference is a result of 180 input documents
and 1300 comments from over 47 countries, and the work of the 1229
delegates from 97 countries who attended NETmundial. India had an
official delegation as well as civil society participants who attended
the meet. In fact, an Indian academic was chosen to co-chair the
organizing committee for civil society for the event. Remote
participations hubs were set up in cities around the country, including
Gurgaon, Chennai and Bangalore. Within the Indian contingent too, as
with any large country, there are divergent views on the governance
framework to be taken for the internet, with those who support the
governments view for multilateralism at the international level and
multistakeholderism at home, and those who oppose the official view and
encourage an international multistakeholder regime.

The final statement – though non-binding – has squarely put its
weight behind multistakeholderism. It talks about protecting the ‘rights
that people have offline, must be protected online… in accordance with
international human rights legal obligations.’ It also champions
cultural and linguist diversity, which was part of India’s official
submission to NETmundial. However, when the document starts to tilt
towards governance structure is where it diverges from the official
Indian position, with language such as – “internet governance
institutions and processes should be inclusive and open to all
interested stakeholders. Processes, including decision making, should be
bottom-up, enabling the full involvement of all stakeholders, in a way
that does not disadvantage any category of stakeholder.”
In the crucial area of cyber jurisdiction, it says, ‘It is necessary
to strengthen international cooperation on topics such as jurisdiction
and law enforcement assistance to promote cybersecurity and prevent
cybercrime. Discussions about those frameworks should be held in a
multistakeholder manner.’ On surveillance, the most controversial topic
from 2013 which prompted the Netmundial meeting in the first place, the
document says, ‘Mass and arbitrary surveillance undermines trust in the
Internet and trust in the Internet governance ecosystem. Collection and
processing of personal data by state and non-state actors should be
conducted in accordance with international human rights law. More
dialogue is needed on this topic at the international level using forums
like the Human Rights Council and IGF aiming to develop a common
understanding on all the related aspects.’

The reaction to Netmundial has been varied, depending on whom you
ask. There are those who have hailed it as a first positive step towards
a multistakeholder process, and are encouraged to find that
participants found more things to agree on than disagree. The US called
it a “huge success”. The European Commission felt Netmundial put it on
the “right track.” Many big businesses released statements indicating
they were pleased at the outcome. The civil society group at Netmundial
expressed ‘deep disappointment’ that the outcome statement did not
address key concerns like surveillance and net neutrality. Others
commentators hailed it a big success for big business as it was able to ‘grab the ball on three important points: intellectual property; net neutrality; and intermediary liability’.

In a sense, India’s refusal to sign the outcome statement, and
instead take back to its stakeholders seems to be completely aligned
with its stated view of the internet. If, as documentation suggests, the
internet is being viewed by India as not merely an open, free, global
commons that should remain untouched by any major governmental control,
but instead a resource that needs to reflect the values of an ‘equinet’ –
a platform for commerce, e-governance, national security mechanism to
be achieved through fair playing rules established by a ‘globally
acceptable legal regime’ and a ‘new cyber jurisprudence’, then there is a
long battle ahead. The official Indian argument does not need to be
viewed through the lens that presupposes it wishes to inflict censorship
in the manner that an authoritarian government might. The argument must
be weighed on the merits of this line of thought – that for Indian
netizens, business, and even state surveillance to survive, it must be
the government who reflects the national interest in international
platforms, after having consulted stakeholders back home.

It certainly seems that the weight and development of a billion
people sits heavy on the shoulders of the Indian government. The
question is: does it need to lead them to the world wide web, or can
they find it themselves?